Soccer has been the world’s most popular sport for the last century and an irresistible game for political and social leaders seeking shortcuts to the hearts of their people. Some of the prime movers of the twentieth-century, including Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Evita and Juan Perón, Augusto Pinochet, and the drug lord Pablo Escobar, have found in soccer a magnificent partner for enflaming patriotism, manipulating the masses, prolonging their stays on the throne, justifying aberrant acts, or simply recreating the old Roman “bread and circuses” (in many cases without the bread). They have tried to turn the beautiful game into something useful. Sometimes it worked, momentarily, but as renowned sports journalist Luciano Wernicke writes in this fascinating and original book, the game and its glories have survived them all.
